Tales From a Pizza Shop

One thing I like about the pizza business is that you meet enough characters to keep things interesting. Like any business, we have had some odd requests and funny situations over the years that keep the work place light-hearted and fun. There are too many to share here, and some of them definitely exceed the PG-13 rating, but below are a couple of stories that happened early on that I still enjoy.

You Want What?

Towards the end of one night we get a call from a customer who places a good size order. We’re not too busy at the time, so we’re happy to get working on it. Roughly 10 minutes later, the same customer calls back and asks, “would you mind delivering a roll of toilet paper with our order?”. Now, the first thing that struck me as funny was that there was no preceding warning like “I know this may sound funny, but…”. Was this normal protocol??? Then I began thinking of what prompted this request (beside the obvious), but wisely refrained from any investigative questions. I quickly fired back that as luck would have it, we were running a special of a free roll of toilet paper for orders over $50. He was happy with that and sure enough, out goes the roll of paper stacked right on top of the order. To this day, I believe it has been the oddest request we’ve received with an order. It even crossed my mind to run a weekly special for a free roll with an order, but thought it may send the wrong message about any effects our product may have.

Shared Snack

Another night was the extreme opposite, we were very busy and orders were cranking in and out. We had made a mistake on a pizza, which is a staff favorite because then it becomes our meal. It was a large pizza and we kept it in the box and on the oven to keep it warm as we snacked on it. After a couple hours, business started to lighten up and one of my employees stated “hey, our pizza is gone”.

Uh oh. I hung my head as I realized that we had delivered a half-eaten pizza. But what could we do at that point? There was no way to figure out where the delivery went. So we sat back and waited for the customer to call, because in our industry, we tend to get immediate feedback on these things. However, that call never came and that my friends, is weird. It wasn’t until about a year or so later when we figured it out. That specific customer was picking up an order and happened to mention that she would like another “sample pizza” like the one we sent out a while ago. Wait…what sample piz……..oh my.

Sure enough, after questioning her, they did indeed receive our half-eaten pizza and thought it was sent as a sample. I laughed and had to tell her the truth, but was finally relieved to hear who had shared a meal with our staff that night and more importantly, that they enjoyed it.

How about you guys? Please share any funny work stories you have as we would love to hear them.